LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

from generation to generation. To take a couple of illustrative cases: If a negro marries a European, the offspring are mulattoes—forms intermediate between the negro and the European. If a mulatto marries a European, the offspring are quadroons—another intermediate form; and the next generation gives us the octoroon—intermediate again between the quadroon and the European. And so, from generation to generation, the negro character gradually fades away and finally disappears. But there are other characters which are inherited entire or not at all, and such characters appear in pairs which are positive or negative to one another. Sex is a case in point. A male marries a female and the offspring are either male or female, never intermediate. The sex-character of only one parent is inherited, and it is inherited completely. The characters of maleness or femaleness pass down unchanged through the ages with no tendency to diminish or to shade off into one another. That is a case of Mendelian inheritance."

      I ran my eyes over the collection and they presently lighted on the rather abnormal-looking foot, hanging, white and shrivelled in the clear spirit. I lifted the jar from the table and then, noticing for the first time, that the foot had a supernumerary toe, I enquired what point the specimen illustrated. "That six-toed foot," Thorndyke replied, "is an example of a deformity that is transmitted unchanged for an indefinite number of generations. This brachydactylous hand is another instance. The brachydactyly reappears in the offspring either completely or not at all. There are no intermediate conditions."

      He picked up the jar, and, having wiped the glass with a dustier, exhibited the hand which was suspended within; and a strange-looking hand it was; broad and stumpy, like the hand of a mole. "There seem to be only two joints to each finger," I said. "Yes. The fingers are all thumbs, and the thumb is only a demi-thumb. A joint is suppressed in each digit."

      "It must make the hand very clumsy and useless," I remarked.

      "So one would think. It isn't exactly the type of hand for a Liszt or a Paganini. And yet we mustn't assume too much. I once saw an armless man copying pictures in the Luxembourg, and copying them very well, too. He held his brush with his toes; and he was so handy with his feet that he not only painted really dextrously, but managed to take his hat off to a lady with quite a fine flourish. So you see, Jardine, it is not the hand that matters, but rather the brain that actuates it. A very indifferent hand will serve if the motor centres are of the right sort."

      He replaced the jar on the table, and then, after a short pause, turning quickly to me, he asked: "What are you doing at present, Jardine?"

      "Principally idling, sir," I replied.

      "And not a bad thing to do either," he rejoined with a smile, "if you do it thoroughly and don't keep it up too long. How would you like to take charge of a practice for a week or so?"

      "I don't know that I should particularly care to, sir," I answered.

      "Why not? It would be a useful experience and would bring you useful knowledge; knowledge that you have got to acquire sooner or later. Hospital conditions, you know, are not normal conditions.

      "General practice is normal medical practice, and the sooner you get to know the conditions of the great world the better for you. If you stick to the wards too long you will get to be like the nurses; who seem to think that,

      "'All the world's a hospital, And men and women only patients.'"

      I reflected for a few moments. It was perfectly true. I was a qualified medical man, and yet of the ordinary routine of private practice I had not the faintest knowledge. To me, all sick people were either in-patients or out-patients. "Had you any particular practice in your mind, sir?" I asked. "Yes. I met one of our old students just now. He is at his wit's end to find a locum tenens. He has to go away to-night or to-morrow morning, but he can't get anyone to look after his work. Won't you go to his relief? It's an easy practice, I believe."

      I turned the question over in my mind and finally decided to try the venture. "That's right." said Dr. Thorndyke. "You'll help a professional brother, at any rate, and pick up a little experience. Our friend's name is Batson, and he lives in Jacob Street, Hampstead Road. I'll write it down."

      He handed me a slip of paper with the address on it and wished me success; and I started at once from the hospital, already quite elated, as is the way of the youthful, at the prospect of a new experience.

      Dr. Batson's establishment in Jacob Street was modest to the verge of dingyness. But Jacob Street, itself, was dingy, and so was the immediate neighbourhood; a district of tall, grimy houses that might easily have seen better days. However, Dr. Batson himself was spruce enough and in excellent spirits at my arrival, as was evident when he bounced into the room with a jovial greeting, bringing in with him a faint aroma of sherry. "Delighted to see you, Doctor!" he exclaimed in his large brisk voice (that "doctor" was a diplomatic hit on his part. They don't call newly-qualified men "doctor" at the hospital.) "I met Thorndyke this morning and told him of my predicament. A busy man is the Great Unraveller, but never too busy to do a kindness to his friends. Can you take over to-night?"

      "I could," said I.

      "Then do. I want particularly to be off by the eight-thirty from Liverpool Street. Drop in and have some grub about six-thirty; I shall have polished off the day's work by then and you'll just come in for the evening consultations."

      "Are there any cases that you will want me to see with you?" I asked.

      "Oh, no," Batson replied, rather airily I thought. "They're all plain sailing. There's a typhoid, he's doing well—fourth week; and there's a tonsilitis and a psoas abscess—that's rather tedious, but still, it's improving—and an old woman with a liver. You won't have any difficulty with them. There's only one queer case; a heart."

      "Valvular?" I asked.

      "No, not valvular; I can tell you that much. I know what it isn't, but I'm hanged if I know what it is. Chappie complains of pain, shortness of breath, faintness and so on, but I can't find anything to account for it. Heart-sounds all right, pulse quite good, no dropsy, no nothing. Seems like malingering, but I don't see why he should malinger. I think I'll get you to drop in this evening and have a look at him."

      "Are you keeping him in bed?" I asked.

      "Yes," said Batson, "I am now; not that his general condition seems to demand it. But he has had one or two fainting attacks, and yesterday he must needs fall down flop in his bedroom when there was nobody there, and, by way of making things more comfortable, he drops his medicine bottle and falls on the fragments. He might have killed himself, you know," Batson added in an aggrieved tone; "as it was, a long splinter from the bottom of the bottle stuck into his back and made quite a deep little wound. So I've kept him in bed since, out of harm's way; and there he is, deuced sorry for himself but, as far as I can make out, without a single tangible symptom."

      "No facial signs? Nothing unusual in his colour or expression."

      Batson laughed and tapped his gold-rimmed spectacles. "Ah! There you are! When you've got minus five D and some irregular astigmatism and a pair of glasses that don't correct it, all human beings look pretty much alike; a trifle sketchy, don't you know. I didn't see anything unusual in his face, but you might. Time will show. Now you cut along and fetch your traps, and I'll skip round and polish off the sufferers."

      He launched me into the outer greyness of Jacob Street and bounced off in the direction of Cumberland Market, leaving me to pursue my way to my lodgings at Gospel Oak.

      As I threaded the teeming streets of Camden Town I meditated on the new experience that was opening to me, and, with youthful egotism, I already saw myself making a brilliant diagnosis of an obscure heart case. Also I reflected with some surprise on the calm view that Batson took of his defective eyesight. A certain type of painter, as I had observed, finds in semi-blindness a valuable gift which helps him to eliminate trivial detail and to impart a noble breadth of effect to his pictures; but to a doctor no such self-delusion would seem possible. Visual acuteness is the most precious item in his equipment.

      I crammed into a large Gladstone bag the bare necessaries for a week's stay, together with a few indispensable instruments, and then mounted the jingling horse-tram of those pre-electric days, which, in due course, deposited

Скачать книгу